People in today's world rely heavily on a wide variety of electrical devices. Almost all of these devices draw power ultimately from a commercial source, usually delivered to the user through a wall outlet or socket. Most wall sockets have two (duplex) or four (quad) adjacent plugs.
A large number of these devices require a low voltage DC power input, typically available through a power supply. The required power supplies tend to be large, even those for providing small current outputs. Unfortunately, most small power supplies are too bulky to be plugged into a wall socket and still allow room for other devices, even simple plugs but also including other power supplies, to be plugged into the same wall socket.
Modem telephones, answering machines, radios, recording machines, facsimile machines, computer accessories such as modems, and many others are designed without internal power supplies and instead rely on an external power supply. Another large class of electrical devices is various portable electrical devices that use rechargeable batteries. For many devices, such as portable phones, electronic cameras, video games, calculators, tape players, and the like, a battery is or can be fitted within the device itself. For some devices, the battery can be removed easily, while in other devices, the battery is not designed to be removed.
A variety of power supplies and battery chargers are available for use with such devices. In general, a manufacturer provides a power supply or battery charger specifically designed for use with one or more products. Traditionally, the power supplies or battery chargers are bulky devices, often weighing 500 grams or more. The specific size of the battery charger is determined by a number of factors, including power to be delivered during product use or recharging and the presence or absence of special circuitry, for example to monitor the state of charge of a battery.
In one typical configuration, a power cord goes between the power supply and a wall socket, with a second power cord extending between the power supply and the electrical device. In another typical configuration, the power supply is built into a module which is designed to be plugged directly into a wall socket, with a single cord connecting the power supply to the battery. Traditional wall-mounted power supply modules have been relatively large. However, even the new, smaller wall-mounted power supplies provide only limited power or are too large for many applications.
Many power supplies or battery chargers are designed to be wall-mounted simply by virtue of plugging into a wall socket. A typical device includes a casing which terminates in a plug which is designed to plug directly into the wall socket. The casing is often designed to lie against a wall to provide mechanical stability and to maintain the plug prongs in proper contact with the wall socket.
Electrical plugs have an orientation and various power supplies are designed to extend in different directions relative to the plug. For example, a traditional American plug has two, parallel flat prongs, with the neutral prong slightly wider than the hot prong, plus, for many plugs, a cylindrical ground lead positioned relative to the flat prongs to form a triangle. Wall sockets are usually installed with the ground socket below the prong sockets, but this orientation is sometimes altered. Most power supplies are designed so the bulk of the device extends away from the plane of the two prongs in the direction of the ground lead, but others have the opposite orientation and a few are rotated by 90.degree..
The problem is accentuated in that most power supplies have a power cord running from the power supply for some distance to an adapter plug or an electrical device and this cord is normally positioned perpendicular to and pointing away from the plane defined by the two main prongs. This extends still farther the area covered by the power supply.
Two significant problems affect use of power cords from such power supplies. The first is one of clearance. Although many power supplies have been oriented so that the power cord extends parallel to the plane of the face of a plug (i.e. along the wall for a wall socket), some newer supplies orient the power cord perpendicular to that plane. In a tight clearance situation, such as is common behind or under furniture, a cord extending in any particular direction can cause problems. Users have been waiting for a device that would allow selective direction of the power cord relative to the plug, but to date, no effective solution has been proposed.
The second major problem with power cords is the jumble caused by even one cord but significantly complicated in a situation with more than one power cord. In general, an electrical device is used a fixed distance away from the power source, but almost never at exactly the length of the power cord. This results in the power cord being draped, folded, or simply dropped in some manner. In many situations, there are multiple power cords with extra length and these cords lie in or around each other. As each new device is plugged in, or an older device is unplugged, then later re-plugged, it is common to re-order the orientation of various power cords so the situation soon resembles a plate of cooked spaghetti, with cords wrapped around others in a sometimes complex knot.
The new device of this invention overcomes these problems by providing a means of easily securing a power cord in a selected orientation. In addition, the new device allows some or even all of the power cord to be wrapped around the device and secured with very close to the desired length of cord remaining free.